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Indian non-vegetarian cooking

Nihari is a deliciously smooth flour based stew with slow cooked mutton and a myriad of spices. This recipe takes a long time to cook but is easy to put together. To get the best flavour, the mutton is cooked on very low heat for upto 4 hours. Traditionally Nihari was cooked all night and then served to the Kings of Delhi in breakfast after the morning prayers. From the royal kitchens of the Mughals, the dish has now crossed all borders of region, religion and course.

The first time I had Nihari was after my marriage, when I was exploring the world of non-vegetarian cuisine. I was told it was one of the dishes that has converted many vegetarians. I loved the Nihari stew! I could see how between Sikander and daddy the whole 1/2 kg mutton nihari was finished in just one meal.

In this Mutton Nihari recipe I used Shaan nihari spice mix. In the recipe I have also described how to make your own Nihari masala from scratch. That is how ammi makes it. You can make it large quantities and store in an airtight container.

Add the nihari masala and 8 cups of water. Mix well, cover and cook on very low heat for about 4 hours until the meat is tender. Keep checking in between. The way to know that the meat is cooked is when it breaks easily with a wooden spoon.

Dissolve wheat flour in half cup of water such that there are no lumps. Slowly add it to the gravy. Stir to mix it well in the gravy and let it simmer for another 10-15 mins till the gravy thickens.

“This proves that the men in our family are better cooks than their wives”

And I am not here to deny it! 🙂 If only the men in my family find the inspiration to cook everyday it will be amazing! But I think the secret of their better cooking lies in the fact that they do it occasionally. Yesterday Sikander was checking our freezer when he saw the mince chicken packet. After some time he comes to tell me “I’ve put the mince chicken out… I don’t know yet, but I will make some kind of kebabs today”. I was like “sure! Why not”. It’s weekend; it’s weekend kitchen – time to explore and experiment 🙂

So he looked up a number of recipes on the net and finally zeroed in on Chicken Shammi Kebabs. Initially we had thought we would freeze some of it as 250gms chicken is a bit too much for two people, but when once the first batch of kebabs was done and we tasted it, we knew there is no scope of freezing! They all simply disappeared into our mouth :). I also made the coriander-mint chutney to go with the kebabs (will post the recipe separately.. this space is just for the hero of the dining table!)

Wash and rinse the soaked dal, add in the pressure cooker with minced chicken, add grated ginger, garlic, bay leaves, salt and 1/2 cup of water, mix everything together and close the lid of the pressure cooker and cook on medium heat.

After one whistle, turn the heat down and cook for another 10-12 minutes.

Turn the heat off and wait till the steam escapes on its own.

Open the pressure cooker and mix everything together. If there is water in the mixture, cook open on medium flame until all water evaporates. Remove from heat.

Remove the bay leaves and grind the chicken and dal mixture to a smooth paste using a hand blender. It is absolutely important that you dry all the liquid before grinding otherwise you can’t get the consistency to make kebabs.

Grease your hands a little and make small patties of the mixture. Make small patties of around a couple of inch in diameter else they might break while frying. We tried making one as big as a burger patty and since the patties are so smooth it broke while turning :o!

Heat a non-stick shallow pan. Once the pan is hot, spray some oil. Spread the patties on the pan and spray some oil on top of the patties

Turn the patties after 4-5 minutes. Be careful in turning so as not to break the patties. Spray some more oil around the patties. It takes around 10-12 minutes for the patties to fry.

My weekend kitchen is a place where people can share their love for food. So I realised it should not be limited to only sharing through comments on blog posts! While I write mainly about Indian food, guests can enrich this personal collection of food experience with their own cuisines and experiments!

Here Atul Gupta shares his Kadhai Prawn recipe made in his hostel kitchen!

-Ashima

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As an experimental cook, I always look forward for an interesting dish with choice of meat. So I look up on the internet for my cravings, jot down the recipe, tweak it to suit my taste and prepare it first time to see how it goes. Then I take the observations from experimentation and further modify the recipe to perfect it the second time! That’s when pictures get uploaded on Facebook 🙂

For quite a time I was craving for prawns (after recently gulping down a huge stock at Barbeque Nation). I found this recipe on Youtube at Sanjeev Kapoor’s Khazana and instantly got an answer to my craving. I tweaked the recipe from original as I didn’t have a mixer grinder (I am a student) and to suit my own taste and I found my dish to be a success.

Good thing with prawns is that they compliment the taste of any curry or sauce it is served with.

Although I want my European friends to try it as well, but I know they will drop dead with so much spice 😉

Ingredients (serves 2):

20-25 King prawns (peeled, de-veined and cleaned- better would be to get frozen prawns as they are frozen right after they are processed so they don’t lose the flavour- just defrost in a covered bowl overnight in fridge or at room temperature for 3 hours. Do remember to use them right after defrosting)

2 medium onions, chopped

1 large tomato, chopped

5 tbsp tomato puree (Ketchup works well too)

2 tsp coriander powder

2 tsp cumin powder

1/2 tsp red chilli powder

1/2 tsp black pepper powder

1/4 tsp turmeric powder

1/2 tsp garam masala powder

2 green chillies (cut into thin strips)

1 inch ginger piece (crushed or cut into thin strips)

3-4 tbsps Oil (depending on how oily you want)

Salt to taste

75 ml (half cup) Water

Method:

Heat oil in a kadhai, and keep on medium flame

Add ginger and chillies. Toss them and add onions. Fry them until light brown or if you want a deeper flavour, fry more (I am a big fan of fried onions and like them dark brown)

Add tomatoes and tomato puree and cook until oil starts separating while constantly tossing the mixture.

Last Sunday dinner was awesome-ness. During his last trip to Assam, Sikander got motivated by Colonel Gursandeep Mundi to do something constructive at home (instead of simply sitting and ordering around! :>). Col Mundi had invited him to his house for dinner and to Sikander’s surprise the Col. himself had done all the cooking. The effect was that I have one more inspired cook in the house :).

This dish was entirely his doing; my only contribution was to give him all the ingredients he asked for. He used two recipes for reference – Jimmy Seervai’s recipe featured in Masterchef Australia and chef R John’s recipe (of moti mahal restaurant, Delhi). But mostly he went by his taste buds in combining flavours. This was, by far, the best butter chicken I have had at home and one up on many restaurants as well.

As an accompaniment, I made fresh naan. But the hero of the day was the utterly-butterly chicken!

Salt to taste (chicken stock has a lot of salt already, so adjust the quantity accordingly. We didn’t use any salt in the preparation)

2 tbsp fresh cream

Fresh coriander leaves for garnish

1 tbsp Oil

50gms butter

Method

Wash and cut chicken into bite-sized pieces.

Stab (Sikander insists I use ‘stab’ instead of ‘prick’) the pieces with a knife edge.

Mix all the marinade ingredients together in a mixing bowl, add chicken pieces, mix it to coat all pieces well.

Keep it aside at room temperature for 1 hour.

After an hour, cover with cling film and refrigerate for 3 hours.

Grill the chicken pieces till they are almost done. Keep aside.

Gravy

Heat oil and 25gms butter in a deep pan.

Add shahi zeera once the oil is hot.

Add onions and sauté till golden brown.

Add green chilli, ginger paste and all the spices except for fenugreek leaves.

Mix well and cook for 2-3 minutes, stirring regularly.

Add chopped tomatoes and cook for 2 minutes.

Add tomato puree and any leftover marinade; mix well and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add chicken stock; mix well and cook for 5 minutes.

Remove pan from heat and blend the gravy to a smooth paste using a stick blender (I use the blender in the pan itself).

Add the grilled chicken pieces to the gravy and cook on medium heat till chicken is cooked completely.

Add the remaining butter, mix well.

Add 1 tbsp fresh cream and dried fenugreek leaves. Mix well.

Remove from heat.

To serve garnish with remaining cream and fresh coriander (We couldn’t get that nice white circle as professionals though 😮 ).

Serve with hot naan or rice.

Note: For a vegetarian version, you can substitute chicken with paneer (cottage cheese) to make butter paneer. With paneer you don’t need to marinate it for so long, just coat the pieces, keep aside for 30 minutes, grill and add to gravy. You can also do away with marination and simply put paneer pieces in the gravy for a quick version.

I saw this recipe on Masterchef Australia Season 3 (Gary’s Master class). The first time I tried it, I put potatoes as there was no chicken at home that time. But when we tasted the gravy, it felt like it was made for meat! 😀 (not that it wasn’t good with popatoes!) So last weekend when Naheed and ammi-daddy came here, I thought of trying it again and this time with chicken. And it was a big hit! 🙂

The best part about the recipe is that all the whole spices which render a tantalizing aroma. Also while the ingredient list is long, once you have all of them in front of you, the actual cooking is really easy.